ALEPPO, Syria and BEIRUT, Lebanon — As evidence mounts that foreign Islamists are fighting alongside Syria’s increasingly radicalized rebels, Christians in Aleppo and elsewhere are taking up arms, often supplied by the regime.

“We saw what happened to the Christians in Iraq,” Abu George, a Christian resident of Aleppo’s Aziza district told GlobalPost. “What is going on in Aleppo is not a popular revolution for democracy and freedom. The fighters of the so-called Free Syrian Army are radical Sunnis who want to establish an Islamic state.”

While the 30-year-old shopkeeper said he had not received any direct threats from Syria’s Sunni Muslim rebels, he fears a repeat of Iraq’s sectarian bloodletting.

Since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, the UN Human Rights Council estimates around half of Iraq’s 1.4 million Christians have fled the country, driven out by nearly a decade of church bombings, kidnappings and sectarian murder....read more

A Turkish journalist facing trial for an alleged plot to overthrow the government was on Tuesday also charged with being a member of a "terrorist organization" and threatening and defaming the judiciary, the DHA news agency said.

It said an Istanbul court accepted an indictment from prosecutors seeking a seven-year prison term for the new charges against Ahmet Sik, who was released in March after more than a year awaiting trial in the "Ergenekon" case, which involves a web of alleged plots against Turkey's government.

The case has received significant attention, the latest sign of Turkey's crackdown on free speech, including the targeting of journalists critical of the Islamist-leaning government.The prosecution of journalists and others as well as the detention of hundreds of people including senior military officers, has drawn criticism from Turkish civil society groups, as well as the United States and European Union.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government has shown little tolerance for Turkish media critical of his policies, with known cases of journalists being threatened, intimidated, detained and forced to flee the country for fear of their safety.

Supporters of the governing AK Party, which has Islamist roots and faced hostility after coming to power in 2002 from an army that sees itself as the guardian of Turkey's secular foundations, call the Ergenekon trials a step towards rule of law.

But its critics say the trials aim to silence dissent against Turkey's longest-standing government in decades, and threaten the country's democracy.

The court in the Istanbul district of Silivri declined comment on Tuesday's indictment. Media reports said it included comments Sik, an award-winning journalist, made after his release from jail in March. The earlier charges against him are still pending.

Sik had after his release criticized the judiciary for being politically motivated and accused judges and prosecutors of inventing conspiracies.

The new charges accuse Sik of "being a member of an armed terrorist organization," as his actions seek to make use of the intimidating powers of criminal organizations, media quoted the new indictment as saying.

The indictment lists 39 judges and prosecutors overseeing the Ergenekon case as "victims."Sik is now set to appear in court on September 13 on the new charges, one day before he appears in court for the ongoing Ergenekon trial.

Syrian opposition figure Haytham al-Maleh told reporters on Tuesday that he has been tasked with forming a government in exile based in Cairo.

"I have been tasked with leading a transitional government," Maleh said, adding that he will begin consultations "with the opposition inside and outside" the country.

Maleh said he was named by a Syrian coalition of "independents with no political affiliation".More than 20,000 people have been killed in Syria since a revolt against President Bashar al-Assad's rule began in March 2011, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. There is no way to independently verify the figure, while the UN has stopped keeping count.Concerned about the aftermath of Assad's potential fall, Maleh said "we don't want to find ourselves in a political or administrative vacuum."

"This phase calls for cooperation from all sides," he said.

Maleh, 81, is a Syrian laywer and human rights activist who has spent several years in prison in his homeland.

His comments come amid continued worrying reports of a growing Islamist militant presence within the rebellion, including al-Qaeda.

Maleh was jailed in October 2009 and released in March 2011 by presidential pardon, just days before the revolt against Assad erupted.

He has worked for Amnesty International since 1989 and helped found the Syrian Association for Human Rights.

He was also imprisoned in 1980 for six years along with a number of trade unionists and political dissidents.There have been other attempts by the Syrian opposition to prepare for a post-Assad future.On Monday, Syrian rebels distributed what they called a "national salvation draft" proposal for a political transition, bringing together military and civilian figures.

The draft by the joint command of the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) proposes the establishment of a higher defense council charged with creating a presidential council, which in turn would bring together six military and civilian figures to lead a future transition.The proposal "meets all the revolution's demands," said the umbrella Military Council Joint Command, based in the central province of Homs.

When Syria's uprising first turned into an armed insurgency, rebel factions had little or no coordination with each other as they separately battled Assad's forces.

The failure of Syria's political opposition and fragmented armed militias to unify and deliver a common approach has raised serious concerns that Syria could lapse into complete civil war should Assad fall, as the various groups compete for power.

US Defense Sec. Leon Panetta has advice for Syria’s President Assad: “If you want to be able to protect yourself and your family, you’d better get the hell out now.” Panetta also warned that the US would not repeat the mistakes it made in Iraq.

“The United States and the international community has made very clear that this is intolerable, and have brought their diplomatic and economic pressure on Syria to stop this kind of violence, to have Assad step down and to transition to a democratic form of government,” he said in an interview with CNN during a visit to Tunisia.

The international community has yet to reach consensus on the ongoing strife in Syria. Russia and China oppose removing Assad, saying his government is supported by a majority of Syrians.

Syria’s government forces should remain intact after embattled President Assad is ousted, said Panetta. Though the Obama administration is resolved against military intervention in the country, Panetta nevertheless drew a comparison with the occupation of Iraq following the 2003 US-led invasion."It's very important that we don't make the same mistakes we made in Iraq," he said, referring to the Bush administration’s decision to disband the country’s military in the wake of the invasion. “I think it’s important when Assad leaves, and he will leave, to try to preserve stability in that country.”

The Defense Secretary said that the most effective way to preserve Syrian stability is to “maintain as much of the military and police as you can, along with security forces, and hope that they will transition to a democratic form of government.”

A temporary military regime is a strategy similar to the one employed by Egypt following the ouster of President Mubarak in January last year, where the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) formed an interim government. But prolonged military rule sparked massive protests amid claims that SCAF was stalling democratic elections in a bid to cling to power.Government forces will be essential to securing key Syrian military sites, including alleged chemical weapons stashes: “It would be a disaster to have those chemical weapons fall into the wrong hands,” Panetta said."The key right now is to continue to bring that pressure on Syria, to provide assistance to the opposition, and to provide whatever kind of humanitarian aid we can to assist the refugees," he told CNN.

Panetta is currently in Tunisia as part of a week-long tour of the Middle East, during which the Syrian conflict will be at the top of his agenda.

This aggressive rhetoric comes as the fighting between government forces and rebels intensifies across Syria. Clashes have wracked the industrial hub of Aleppo for the past week, with rebels vowing to turn the northern city into the “grave of the regime.”

The Obama administration has said that it is providing as much “non-lethal” aid as it can to Syrian rebel forces. Russia has accused the West of fueling the conflict by supporting the opposition, claiming that more should be done to facilitate dialogue between the warring camps.

The performance of the Western media (American, British, French and others) regarding the Syrian conflict has been quite shameful. One does not expect much from American media. Ill-informed foreign editors and correspondents and political cowardice turn American media into tools of US foreign policy.

This is especially true when it comes to coverage of the Middle East, where extra political courage and uncharacteristic level of knowledge and expertise are rather rare, even though they are essential to challenging US foreign policy. But when it comes to Syria, British media – including the liberal Guardian which has often been brave in challenging Western foreign policies and wars – have been indistinguishable from American media.

These media have failed their readers on many levels. Their shortcomings can be summarized as follows:

1. Resorting to methods of documentations that are never accepted when covering the Arab-Israeli conflict; like the reliance on accounts of people through Skype and email whose names are not obtained through a random process, and the reliance on Saudi or Qatari press media offices.

2. Hiding behind the cliché that “the Syrian government does not allow journalists in” to justify the various anthologies of errors contained in media reports. Many journalists have either been allowed in or have managed to sneak in, so the general disclaimer used daily in the New York Times is inaccurate and misleads readers. Such a disclaimer is never used against Israel, which imposes rigid forms of censorship on reports emanating from Israel, especially when Israel is perpetrating its regular war crimes and massacres.

3. The reliance on exile Syrian opposition reports without any scrutiny or healthy skepticism.

4. The assumption that Saudi-funded or Qatari-funded media outfits don’t carry the agendas of those governments.

5. Obscuring on purpose the heavy role of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Syrian exile opposition in order to project a deceptive image of a secular opposition.

6. The role that most Western journalists and correspondents have played on Twitter to cheerlead the Free Syrian Army and the Syrian exile opposition. The pretense of objectivity is discarded.

7. The consistent reliance (especially in the US press) on “experts” from the Zionist Washington Institute for Near East Policy as if it has no ideological lobbying agenda. Reference to that institute only informs the readers of its political slant – to put it mildly.8. The deliberate distortion and mis-characterization of one side in the conflict.

9. The insistence that Bashar al-Assad has no power base in Syria – outside of the Alawi community – when the endurance shown by the regime requires more than a resort to brute force, which the regime is known for.

10. The gap between past coverage of Syria which disregarded human rights violations by the Assad regime during its years of understanding with Western governments and the sudden discovery of the brutality of the regime.

11. The obsession with Israeli concerns: the media audaciously covers the Israeli-originated story about Syrian chemical weapons without ever mentioning the vast arsenal of Israeli WMDs.

12. Lack of verification of published information.

13. Blurring the lines between editorial policies and media reports – this has been true even in The Economist – one of the best samples of modern journalism.

14. Covering the story of Syria from other capitals, primarily Beirut, where the press corps is highly dependent on the services, suggestions, and even instructions of the Hariri press office. (The former CNN bureau chief now works for the Hariri family).

15. Fear of challenging assumptions and orientations of Western policies.

16. Lack of irony in reporting about Qatari and Saudi support for democratic struggle in Syria.17. Covering up war crimes and other misdeeds by the Free Syrian Army.

18. The reluctance to report on foreign jihadi fighters in Syria until the US government admitted their presence.

19. The tendency to echo one another in the coverage.

20. The lack of hesitation to report lies and fabrications as long as they serve the cause of Western governments and as long as they hurt the cause of the enemy Syrian regime.

21. Disregard for the political background of some of the sudden opponents of the Syrian regime. Western media have yet to report on these personalities who have been apologists for the Syrian regime and who pretended that they were opponents of the regime when it became politically and financially convenient.

22. The pattern of reliance on reporters who don’t know Arabic and don’t know the region continues. The New York Times continues to send reporters who have covered American politics or the police beat in NYC to cover the Middle East region.

There is no accountability and it is unlikely that someone is going to write a book on the shortcomings and failures of Western media. Western media also marketed the Libya story and they were never made accountable for the lies they peddled there.

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Reuters has been exposed in the past for fabricating evidence against Syria . No MSM what ever their claims are to be trusted.

The government of Bashar al-Assad declared victory on Sunday in a hard-fought battle for Syria’s capital Damascus, and pounded rebels who control of parts of its largest city Aleppo.

Assad’s forces have struggled as never before to maintain their grip on the country over the past two weeks after a major rebel advance into the two largest cities and an explosion that killed four top security officials.

Government forces have succeeded in reimposing their grip the capital after a punishing battle, but rebels are still in control of sections of Aleppo, clashing with reinforced army troops for several days.

“Today I tell you, Syria is stronger… In less than a week they were defeated (in Damascus) and the battle failed,” Foreign Minister Walid Moualem said on a visit to Iran, Assad’s main ally in a region where other neighbours have forsaken him.

“So they moved on to Aleppo and I assure you, their plots will fail.”

Rebel fighters, patrolling opposition districts in flat-bed trucks flying green-white-and-black “independence” flags, said they were holding off Assad’s forces in the south-western Aleppo district of Salaheddine, where clashes have gone on for days.

Opposition activists also reported fighting in other rebel-held districts of Aleppo, in what could herald the start of a decisive phase in the battle for Syria’s commercial hub, after the army sent tank columns and troop reinforcements last week.

Helicopter gunships hovered over the city shortly after dawn and the thud of artillery boomed across neighbourhoods. Syrian state television said soldiers was repelling “terrorists” in Salaheddine and had captured several of their leaders.

Some rebel-held areas visited by Reuters were empty of residents. Fighters were basing themselves in houses – some clearly abandoned in a hurry, with food still in the fridges.

A burnt out tank lay in the street, while nearby another one had been captured intact, covered in tarpaulin and left in a car park, perhaps for the rebels themselves to use against any ground assault by Assad’s forces....read more

The British media are sick perverts , lusting for the blood of Assad. BUT this time there is a young beautiful woman involved, the wife of Assad. Sickening but true they long to see her naked, raped, broken body lying in the dust . Headlines that will sell worldwide but for those of us who truly care about the people of Syria we shall turn away in horror.

Luke Harding

The green tanks of Bashar al-Assad's army twinkled in the afternoon haze – two of them, parked just outside a military base. From the Syrian rebel position, a mere 1.5km away, an opposition fighter peered curiously at them. He poked his binoculars through a tiny window, gesturing to watch out for snipers.

At that moment there was a percussive boom: a shell landing in the nearby hills. Syria's war has been going on for 16 long months – a brutal conflict fought between a well-armed military state and lightly-weaponed revolutionaries. This battle has raged across the country: in Homs, Hama and most recently Damascus.

Last week it arrived in Aleppo in northern Syria. It is the country's biggest city, home to 2.5 million people, inhabited since the second millennium BC, and situated on a historic trading route between the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia. It is a microcosm of Syria's complex internal forces, religious and civic. A murderous storm now grips it.

"The bombing has been going on all night. And all morning," Abdul Sadiq, a Free Syrian Army commander, said indifferently. "The shelling is continuous." His militia volunteers seized the town of Anadan, 13km immediately north of Aleppo, a month ago. Groups of FSA fighters infiltrated south and east Aleppo on 20 July.

Over the past week Damascus has responded by pulverising rebel-held districts using artillery and helicopter gunships. A tank column has arrived in the western suburbs. In the meantime, tens of thousands of civilians have fled – believing that Aleppo's fate is likely to be darkly similar to that of Homs, the cradle of Syria's revolution, much of it now a smouldering ruin.Sadiq's rebels have taken over a florid Italian-style villa in Anadan, until recently occupied by regime officers. The Syrian army is encamped within jogging distance in the nearby Hraytan base; since pulling out it has targeted the building's new owners relentlessly. Large chunks have been gnawed from the villa's yellow balustrades. The murky swimming pool round the back is untouched; two cats were mewing on Saturday in the ornate gardens.

Despite the unpromising facts on the ground, the rebels were upbeat. "The [regime] army is sick. It is destroyed from inside. There is no power inside it," Abu Ahmed, another commander, explained. Striking a vivid analogy, he added: "They have plenty of weapons from Russia. But this is like an injection into the arm of a dying man." One fighter then showed off a large mortar that had landed on the terrace. "Don't worry. It didn't explode," he said.

Anadan was once a holiday resort used by wealthy Aleppines, its mountains somewhat cooler than the city. The town now lies abandoned. Concrete buildings have been destroyed, shells have made wonky the electricity pylons and the town's brown fields bear the pitted scars of nightly mortar attacks. Only a handful of grizzled revolutionaries with Kalashnikovs exist here.The surrounding landscape is an ancient kaleidoscope of ghostly Byzantine churches and poor Kurdish hamlets. In the mountains close to here lived the fifth century saint St Simeon the Stylite; a remarkable cruciform church marks the spot where he spent many years preaching from a column. Aleppo is still home to many Christians of various denominations, most fearful of what their future might be in a post-Assad Syria.

Others, however, have enthusiastically embraced the revolution. In the opposition-held town of Dar Ta'zar, several students from Aleppo University were now with the local FSA. Many of them said they had fled their campus following a campaign of terror this spring by regime security forces. In February troops attacked students who had been demonstrating against the Assad regime, killing at least four of them. One was shot in the head and two in the chest, witnesses said.

"[The university] was like a big jail, actually. A lot of students were being arrested by the secret police," Saeed, an engineering student, 23, recounted on Saturday. (He declined, for understandable reasons, to give his second name.) "We stopped going to classes. You couldn't walk in the city. If you were near a demonstration they would capture you."

Another student, Amar Naser, also 23, said the security forces first stormed the university last October, arresting 500 people, ordering them to lie on the ground and then beating and kicking them. Troops returned in early March, he said, throwing one student to his death from a sixth-story dormitory. One student, Mohamad Asaad, said he witnessed this – a war against the country's intelligentsia.

Naser said: "They treated us like we were the enemy. They would stop anyone carrying a laptop. It was like: 'Oh, he's a terrorist! Get him.' They would ask: 'Do you have Facebook? Where did you buy Facebook?' The Shabiha[regime paramilitary forces] are so stupid they don't even know what Facebook is."

Naser said the secret police arrested him when he was halfway through his final engineering exams, with four papers to go – meaning that he failed the year. Typically, the regime swept up boys, he said, but also detained a few girls, with some better-off parents able to buy their offspring out of jail for sums between $200 (£127) and $20,000.

As a Sunni, he said, he had no prospect under the current regime of leaving the country or fulfilling his long-term dream to be an architect in Germany. He said he was worried about one of his friends, Mohamad Hussein, a third-year engineer. Hussein had disappeared: "I don't know where he is now. Maybe he is dead. Maybe he is lost."

The students – one of whom said he was studying philosophy and liked Plato – were resting with other fighters in a basement FSA HQ. Two rebels then came in escorting a prisoner. He turned out to be a member of the Shabihamilitia captured during fighting inside Aleppo on Wednesday.

The prisoner identified himself as Dawish Dado, 33. He said he was a decorator in Aleppo, and was recruited two months ago to join the Shabiha as the regime's grip on the country began to unravel. Dado was in handcuffs; he had two black eyes and a plaster over his possibly broken nose. "I got these fighting with the FSA," he explained diplomatically squatting in the corner.

Asked if he killed anyone himself, Dado replied: "No." But he confirmed his Shabiha unit had looted many houses in Aleppo, robbed people, and probably raped women. "I didn't witness rape. But I heard talk about it in my unit," he said. What did they steal? "Private property. Pretty much everything we could lay our hands on," he indicated.

The Shabihaincluded some criminals freed from jail by Assad, as well as opportunists, out for whatever they could get, he suggested. Unlike the army, which has seen mass desertions by Sunnis, the Shabihawas a mixed force, he said. His unit included Sunnis as well as Alawites – Assad's minority ruling sect – and worked, he suggested, as the regime's thuggish enforcers."They Shabiha don't want the regime. They don't want the revolution either. They simply want to destroy the country," he said candidly, sitting in an FSA cell. He said a colonel from airforce intelligence, Abdul Latif, had recruited him. Latif told him he was fighting against a "terrorist group" and offered him a salary of 20,000 dinars a month ($300).

Residents inside Aleppo, meanwhile, say not everybody in the city supports the revolution, with the wealthy viewing the rebels as a sort of unwelcome peasant army. "If I were to generalise I would say the middle class and upper class don't want the rebels. They want everything to be how it was so they can trade and go to coffee shops," one English-speaking resident, who lives in a regime area, said via Skype.

The FSA fighters who slipped into the city nine days ago now control a crescent-shaped chunk of Aleppo, a city known to Syrians by its Arabic name of Haleb. They moved into districts where they are confident of support, setting up checkpoints bordering other areas possibly more sympathetic to the regime. They are armed with rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikovs – not enough, it would appear, to defeat Assad's tanks and helicopter gunships.Assad's strategy seems clear enough: to besiege the rebels inside Aleppo, as in Homs, and to shell them until they are crushed. The difference now, however, is that the FSA controls large chunks of the Syrian countryside, including the environs of Aleppo. And it believes it is winning. "They think they are besieging us. In fact we are besieging them," the commander Abu Ahmed said.

Mary Fitzgerald writes for the Irish Times , her tweets filled with hatred for the Assad regime. Fitzgerald proud to boast she is running with the terrorists and that the Irish have now joined forces to bring Assad down....This is the NEW IRA. Fitzgerald 's latest tweet from a woman she claims asked her 'why has the world abandon her' ?. Fitzgeralds agenda , NATO strikes on Syria.

A masked member of the Real IRA at a republican Easter commemoration ceremony in Derry. The Real IRA is merging with other dissident groups in an escalation of the threat of violence against security forces. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA

Three of the four main dissident republican terror groups in Northern Ireland are to merge and reclaim the banner of the IRA, in an escalation of attempts to de-stabilise power sharing.

The Real IRA has been joined by Republican Action Against Drugs, which has been running a violent vigilante campaign in Derry, and a coalition of independent armed republican groups – leaving only the Continuity IRA outside the new group.

In a statement released to the Guardian, the new organisation claimed it had formed a "unified structure, under a single leadership". It said the organisation would be "subservient to the constitution of the Irish Republican Army".

This is the first time since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that a majority of the forces of dissident republicanism has coalesced.

Republican sources told the Guardian that the new paramilitary force included several hundred armed dissidents, including some former members of the now disbanded Provisional IRA who have been conducting a campaign of shooting and forcible exile of men in Derry City whom they accuse of drug dealing.

It also includes what the statement calls "non-conformist republicans", or smaller independent groups from Belfast and rural parts of Northern Ireland.

Republican Action Against Drugs and the Real IRA will cease to exist, one source close to the dissidents said.

The new organisation is planning to intensify terror attacks on the security forces and other targets related to what it regards as symbols of the British presence, according to the source.Such targets could include police stations, regional headquarters of Ulster Bank, and the UK City of Culture 2013 celebration in Derry – which the dissidents have dubbed "normalising British rule".

In its statement the new group said: "In recent years the establishment of a free and independent Ireland has suffered setbacks due to the failure among the leadership of Irish nationalism and fractures within republicanism." This is a reference to the split between hardline republicans opposed to the peace settlement and Sinn Féin, which has followed a political strategy. Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin, Northern Ireland's deputy first minister, was a leading figure in the Provisional IRA.

In a clear dig at Sinn Féin's participation in the power-sharing executive with unionists, the dissidents' statement said: "The Irish people have been sold a phoney peace, rubber-stamped by a token legislature in Stormont."

It said that the "necessity of armed struggle in pursuit of Irish freedom" against what it described as "the forces of the British crown", would only be avoided by the removal of the British military presence in Northern Ireland. It demanded "an internationally observed timescale that details the dismantling of British political interference in our country".

It also attacked the Northern Ireland secretary, Owen Paterson, over the arrest of several key republican figures, referring to him as an overlord. "Non-conformist republicans are being subjected to harassment, arrest and violence by the forces of the British crown; others have been interned on the direction of an English overlord. It is Britain, not the IRA, which has chosen provocation and conflict."

It is understood that among the republicans who have joined the new organisation are those responsible for the murder in April 2011 of Ronan Kerr, a Catholic recruit to the Police Service of Northern Ireland, and the terrorists who targeted Peadar Heffron, another Catholic police officer, who was seriously injured in January 2010 by a bomb which exploded inside his car as he was driving to his police station.

The recruitment of Republican Action Against Drugs activists in Derry marks a big step up in the terror campaign in the city. Dozens of former Provisional IRA members have been involved in shooting and intimidating mainly young Catholic men whom they accuse of drug dealing in Derry.

Republican Action Against Drugs' campaign has become notorious around the world since an investigation by the Guardianthis year into the wave of shootings and forced expulsions in Northern Ireland's second city.

Republican factions

Until this week there were four separate violent groups opposed to Sinn Féin's peace strategy. As a result of this merger three republican terror groups have become one, reclaiming the banner of the IRA:

The Real IRA was formed out of a split within the Provisional IRA (PIRA) in 1997 and was responsible for the Omagh atrocity a year later.

Republican Action Against Drugs (RAAD) – a group comprising ex-PIRA members whose purpose was to run an armed vigilante campaign against drug dealers. It has agreed to coalesce with other anti-ceasefire republicans.

Independent republican factions – until now an amalgam of terror groups operating in Northern Ireland. They are sometimes referred to collectively as Óglaigh na hÉireann.

The adoption of the name IRA is an attempt by the dissident republicans to reclaim from history the title of the movement that dominated republican politics in the 20th century. Since the Irish war of independence there have been several mutations of the IRA from a mass movement of armed fighters in the 1918-1921 Anglo-Irish war to a small band of diehards who conducted the 1958-62 border campaign. Its use has withered since the peace agreement in 1998.

Obama Regime Threatens to Kill President Assad.In a Washington Post article that appeared today, July 29th, 2012, under the title White House cautions Syria rebels not to repeat mistakes of Iraq, Obama regime has threatened to kill the Syrian president Bashar Al Assad and warned the terrorists from the USA Al Qaeda Federal Agency working in Syria not to “completely disband the Syrian security and government ‘apparatus’”, referring to Syrian army, security officers and police forces.

Friday, July 27, 2012

Reports of Libyan chemical weapons brought in through Turkey, caches discovered in Damascus point to possible false flag.by Tony CartalucciJuly 27, 2012 - For a Western media so fond of reporting "activist" accounts, rumors, and even fabrications, and with all the talk of an impending "massacre" in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, reports of so-called "Free Syrian Army" militants seen trying on gas masks, along with reports of Libyan chemical weapon caches & equipment being discovered in Damascus is surely headline news.

Images: (Top) FSA fighters, one on the left wearing a "Jihadist" headband, another on the right trying on a military-grade gas mask, were reportedly photographed in Aleppo, Syria. (Bottom) Chemical weapons and equipment from Libya have been reportedly discovered as troops search areas of Damascus after quelling last week's militant attack. ...read morehttp://landdestroyer.blogspot.com.es/2012/07/syrians-nato-backed-militants-seen.html

Large numbers were killed, injured or displaced. Two million people lost their livelihoods. Homes and communities were destroyed.

Nobel laureate Harold Pinter called NATO's aggression "barbaric (and despicable), another blatant and brutal assertion of US power using NATO as its missile (to consolidate) American domination of Europe."

Lawless aggression became humanitarian intervention. An avenue to Eurasia was opened. A permanent US military presence was established. American imperialism claimed another trophy.

In 2001, NATO intervened in Macedonia. Post-9/11, much more lay ahead. Iraq followed Afghanistan, then Libya, now Syria, ahead Iran, and numerous proxy wars against Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and other challengers to US hegemony.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

July 26, 2012 - For many months, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has depicted the militants creating havoc across his nation as "armed gangs," "foreign terrorists," and simply just, "terrorists."

During a 2011 interview in Damascus with Barbra Walters, Walters feigned indignation when hearing these labels, insisting that these were people simply seeking "democracy" and "freedom."

It turns out months later, it was President Assad who has been vindicated, and Walters' disrespectful, curt condemnation exposed as the same brand of war propaganda that has mired the West in over a decade of ceaseless, bloody, bankrupting wars and interventions.

The West is backing Jabhat Al Nosrah, the al-Qaida branch in Syria. After Libya, only an idiot would believe a word iterated by the west and particularly, the FUKUS Axis (France, UK, US), which backed a terrorist group on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s own list of proscribed factions. As the west and its terrorists grow desperate, read on and see what they are planning. First stop: False Flag event at the Olympics?

The repulsive filth we saw in Libya, slicing the breasts off women, murdering, torching buildings, torturing, raping, looting, committing ethnic cleansing is the political epitaph of Obama, Clinton, Cameron, Hague, Sarkozy and Juppé, the FUKUS Axis. The lawsuit has been launched (*), not yet taken up, but that matters not. The lack of action only underlines the lack of credibility as international law is insulted and not applied. The “West”, ladies and gentlemen, is one evil clique of demonic savages, believe me.

This murderous filth is back, in Syria, joining up with the traitors and dregs of Syrian society wanting to make a fast buck by supporting these western hypocrites, implementing a west-friendly government as yet another Arab nation is humiliated and destroyed, as it is used either for its resources or for its strategic importance. In the case of Syria, it is not a question of freedom and democracy – it is a question of depriving Russia of its Mediterranean base and it is a stepping-stone towards the forthcoming attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran. Central Asia follows. Then Siberia. After Amazonia.

The villain in the story is not President Assad or his Government, backed by the majority of the Syrian people – he and they are desperately trying to defend themselves from terrorists, armed by the FUKUS-GCC Axis (France, UK, US and the Gulf Cooperation Council, cowardly Arab traitor states insulting Islam with their murderous collaboration and treachery)....read more

A film set was created for Tripoli (Libya) in Qatar, and they created fictitious demonstrations in order to sway public opinion worldwide. The same happened in Baghdad. And similar events are occurring in Syria. Many Journalists have left AlJazeera as a consequence. Shoruk explains.

Before you read western media propaganda, chomping at the bit to NATO Syria, I ask that you look at footage posted of Aleppo five hours ago. While it is true there have been heavy clashes over the last two days it is also true that NATO backed terrorists have suffered heavy losses, something western media will not tell you.

UN peacekeepers monitor the Syrian side of the border from an Israeli army post. Photograph: Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images

Western military intervention in the Syrian crisis is "looking increasingly likely" because the conflict is now in danger of provoking violence across the Arab world that could lead to cross-border invasions, a report has warned.

The study, by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), finds fears that President Assad's regime may turn to its stockpile of chemical weapons, or that these devices may be stolen in the chaos of the civil war. It says these concerns have intensified "the sense of imminent international conflict that is gripping the region".

The broader implications of the violence inside Syria are now of more concern to diplomats than the human misery inside the country, and these anxieties are making the west rethink its strategy of non-intervention, it reports.

"The problem of containing the Syrian conflict, preventing it sparking even greater violence, fragmenting neighbouring countries and even provoking cross-border invasions, is now more urgent than dampening the violence inside Syria itself," says Professor Michael Clarke, RUSI's director general.

The study says the stage is now set for a proxy contest, with Iranian-backed groups in Lebanon and Shia forces in Syria and Iraq being pitted against Sunni communities in the same countries, some of them supported by Saudi Arabia.

"An arc of proxy confrontation between Iranand Saudi Arabia is likely to follow the fall of the Alawite elite in Syria that will set the terms of the Middle East for a generation," Clarke says.

"We are not moving towards intervention, but intervention is moving towards us. Events of recent days have created a step-change in the situation that will make a hands-off approach increasingly difficult to maintain."

The study rules out the likelihood of a full-scale invasion by the west, but suggests more limited action to protect civilians and to hasten regime change has urgently to be considered.Military support would then be needed to support any new government and to prevent the desire for retribution against the old order leading to more interfactional bloodshed.

"It is highly likely that some western special forces and intelligence resources have been in Syria for a considerable time," says Colonel Richard Kemp, who contributes to the report, A Collision Course for Intervention.

"The most important intelligence can only be gained by clandestine operations by special forces and national intelligence agencies on the ground."

These operations could also include sabotage and encouraging a coup d'état against the regime. Special forces advisers working alongside rebel commanders, with air support on call, "could be tactically and strategically decisive, as it proved in Afghanistan in 2001 and Libya in 2011," Kemp adds.

With Assad's family losing power and beset by defections in the lower ranks after last week's assassinations of those in the highest ranks, the study suggests, Iran and Russia may be prepared to "attempt a controlled implosion, by working to replace President Assad with a favoured Sunni successor".

Shashank Joshi, a RUSI research fellow, says recent developments "all indicate an ever-narrowing base of support [for Assad] and a high probability of sudden and unpredictable collapse".

• This article was amended on 25 July to remove an erroneous description of Shashank Joshi as an expert on Syrian affairs.